BES Admins – Required Updates to Firewall & BES Configurations

Josep tipped me into this little change last week and I did a little bit more digging. One of our resident BES guru’s let me know about a document that RIM has only released to partners about an upcoming IP change that all BES administrators should know about.

NOTE: I am not sure if this change is for EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) regions only since the only reports I am hearing are from there. I am not a BES guru myself so forgive me if I get some of this wrong.

The main change is that RIM has updated the IP addresses they use for SRP connectivity. You need to know which IP addresses to add and from what I can tell in this recent knowledgebase article these are the IP addresses that need to be allowed. I am not sure which ones are new but this seems up to date. They have some specific information for the EMEA so make sure to read it.

Why do you have to update/verify your settings?

You need to update your firewall settings and verify you are using the recommended BlackBerry Enterprise Server configuration in order to take advantage of BlackBerry resiliency and benefit from the business continuity features of the BlackBerry® Infrastructure. Customers who implement the recommended configuration will be more likely to maintain connectivity during a service issue than others who are using a static IP address, or other non-recommended configuration.

What will happen if you don’t verify your settings? Will your BlackBerry Enterprise Server stop working?

Those who do not verify their BlackBerry Enterprise Server settings will maintain their connection to the BlackBerry Infrastructure, but may not be able to take advantage of the BlackBerry Infrastructure business continuity features. If the BlackBerry Enterprise Server settings do not follow the recommended configuration, you may not be able to automatically failover and may have to manually update to another IP address to reconnect. In some cases, if the proper IP addresses are not allowed through your corporate firewalls, you may experience minor delays or interruptions as your BlackBerry Enterprise Server attempts to connect to IP addresses that are not currently permitted.